One day when I’m dead maybe I won’t be
so naughty but in Sunday School today
I fell asleep again, up too late last
night reading Wonder Woman comic books,
my sister’s, I prefer Superman and
Batman but Diana Prince will do in
a pinch and she’s got that magic lasso
that she wraps around your waist and you must
do her bidding and those bracelets that break
the speed of approaching bullets and she’s
as strong as an . . . Amazon, I guess strong
-er, and if she can’t fly she surely can
leap but anyway when I woke in Sun
-day School standing there before me as if
I was God and she a new, dead soul was
Miss Hooker, our teacher, but then she be
-came just Miss Hooker again, I love her
so that’s enough but she’s pretty damn old,
25 to my 10 and so she was
my Sunday School teacher through and through once
more and I could see how unhappy she
was, I’d made her that way or my evil
had so I’m kind of a villain, that’s not
all bad, I guess, but it doesn’t square with
church and Sunday School and God and Jesus
and the Holy Ghost and all those things which
go into religion but then again
there’s Satan and Judas, too, I’m in good
company you might say, ha ha, any
-way Miss Hooker asked me if I needed
more sleep and all my classmates laughed, evil
got mocked and I guess I deserved it but
I said No ma’am, I’m sorry, it’s not you
nor God nor Jesus, I was up too late
again last night, reading Wonder Woman
comics, I guess because she reminds me
of you and of course Miss Hooker smiled and
the girls in the classroom cried Awww all at
once like I was a puppy or a chick
and my buddies scoffed and hooted and this
is the world we live in but inside our
trailer-classroom and the only thing miss
-ing is, well, I can’t say what, Miss Hooker
might, I’d ask her but you don’t want to know.
By Gale Acuff
